tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354188387873729652024-03-12T18:22:36.576-07:00SOCIAL HORIZONSJanet Henderson writes on social justice, community development, theology and the future.
Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-22422113172672775442021-07-23T08:52:00.014-07:002021-07-24T07:03:19.890-07:00Truth Hurts: So Do Lies<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Dawn Butler MP was right, yesterday, to highlight the extent to which untruths have been told in parliament and to add that people have lost their lives as a result. </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jHmj7DV6G_s/YPrj_rYaZdI/AAAAAAAAEao/1fMtW_u5ljgBK7Q8SvWi8jxD2WpzUVIqACLcBGAsYHQ/s2000/Dawn_Butler_MP.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jHmj7DV6G_s/YPrj_rYaZdI/AAAAAAAAEao/1fMtW_u5ljgBK7Q8SvWi8jxD2WpzUVIqACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Dawn_Butler_MP.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dawn Butler MP</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Accusations of lying are very serious and that's why the House of Commons has stringent rules to prevent MPs levelling them at one another. However, a significant boundary seems to have been crossed in the present parliament. Firstly, 'untruths' in the political world are often a matter of context and opinion. But, as Butler said, in many of the cases she was citing whatever was said had led to people losing their lives. Secondly, although she gave examples of how truth had been damagingly misrepresented, </span><i style="font-family: arial;">she</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> was punished yet there is no mechanism currently being effectively used to hold to account those who have told lies. As a parliamentary democracy, we seem to have lost our grip on the difference between truth and untruth and to have undermined the various systems intended to expose lying and hold to account those who abuse truth.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">To say that somebody lies should never be done lightly or without evidence. But what she said appears to have struck chords all round the country in many different quarters. It would be improper to speculate on contexts about which we know little and conclude someone is lying. Each of us might have an opinion but we can only call out lying where it is something we have experienced and where we have evidence. If truth is being abused, our duty is to speak for our own area of experience and expertise.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the Social Care sector it is indeed the case that, because of what has been said at the dispatch box, people have lost their lives. I was working part-time in a care home last year. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">We were repeatedly told by government ministers that 'a ring of protection has been put around care homes'. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm retired and found myself in the rather unusual position of being a nurse trained in infection control working as a carer in a pandemic. I had worked on a haematology unit where we were required to cover an infectious diseases unit at night during the initial phases of HIV. Haematology patients are often severely immunocompromised so we had to take enormous care not to transmit infection between units (it was actually a pretty crazy arrangement.) So when COVID-19 struck I was immediately conscious just how vulnerable care home residents were and how extremely open every home would be to transmission of the virus. It would take only a few days for it to spread widely within homes and it would clearly be life-threatening to many elderly people.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Families were faced with a dilemma. Some thought about whether they should care for their relative at home but were swayed by the fact that 'a protective ring' was being thrown around care homes and believed they would be safer left where they were. Yet at exactly the time this statement was first being made, I was taking phone calls from hospitals who had been instructed to discharge COVID+ patients and untested patients into care homes. We refused, but many did not and, in fairness, where were these patients to go? As staff, we objected, we warned, we wrote to our MPs and the CQC but the message 'there is a ring of protection' in place was repeated. We were directed to online sites setting out regulations for 'safe procedures' I knew to be unsafe or unachievable in the circumstances, we had no PPE and we were under huge pressure to accept COVID+ residents.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary make statements that tangibly and immediately impact on people's ability to make life-saving decisions they ought to be honest. When they are repeatedly challenged about statements and continue to assert that they are true, we assume it is on the basis they have checked the facts. It could not both be true that 'a protective ring' was in place </span><i style="font-family: arial;">and</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> homes were being forced to take in COVID+ patients, employing agency staff who move between homes to cover for sickness and isolation. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The point I am making here is not a criticism of what was or wasn't done (that's a different story) but </span><b style="font-family: arial;">a protest at the repeated statement of something that, very quickly, <i>everyone </i>could see was untrue.</b><span style="font-family: arial;"> <b>That constantly re-iterated lie was responsible for thousands of deaths.</b> Had the lie not been told there was the possibility that something could have been done both systemically by professionals and for individuals by their families and carers.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Dawn Butler's point is that there are examples of this kind of distortion of truth right across issues, sectors and departments. When parliament cannot distinguish between truth and untruth, or between opinion and proven fact we are in trouble. When parliament cannot hold all MPs including prime ministers to account for the truth of what they do and say, we need an overhaul of our parliamentary systems. When MPs who are trying to point to the truth are expelled while those who repeat untruth are protected, we are not seeing democracy function. The lie becomes 'all is well' when, in truth, all is very far from well. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">In our current circumstances we need more MPs who will pay the price of speaking up. If the opposition benches were to empty out every time a challenge is met with prevarication or lying, the Speaker would have to take action to make the government accountable.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">'Every time somebody discovers a truth {s}he becomes a stone in society's shoes.' Bangambiki Habyarimana <i>The Pearl of Great Price.</i> </span></span></p>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-82359880604420422762020-10-11T04:35:00.025-07:002022-05-13T02:26:04.399-07:00IICSA and the Anglican Church<div class="separator"><div class="separator" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/publications/investigation/anglican-church" border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="397" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tKLvT6bs-sc/X4LnQv7BCAI/AAAAAAAAEU0/lCxjSykp0b8PlDpJYtSYa-JlsLdYyKl9gCLcBGAsYHQ/w259-h320/anglican-cover.png" width="259" /></div></div><p> <a href="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/publications/investigation/anglican-church">https://www.iicsa.org.uk/publications/investigation/anglican-church</a></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">I ceased to receive a stipend from the Church of England and the Church in Wales in 2013 having resigned my titles ('jobs'). I returned my licence to minister in 2015. The decision to hand back my licence had been a long time in the making but it was crystallised in a moment that remains clear in my memory. A friend had just told me of the sexual abuse they had suffered as a teenager at the hands of a priest. Presiding at Holy Communion later that morning, I stood behind the altar looking down the cathedral at the patterns of light and shadow. I simply thought, 'I can't go on doing this. I can't go on representing a church that talks about transformation, repentance and healing yet persistently turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to abuse.'</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I say the moment had been a long time in the making. It began twenty seven years earlier just after my ordination when I reported some very damaging behaviour by a member of the clergy to my bishop. No appropriate action was taken so I resigned. The bishop was very angry. He thought I was breaking my ordination vows. I tried to explain that if this kind of behaviour was evident in my former place of work (a hospital) it would be expected that it was brought to the notice of managers as it was a danger to others. Nothing in my ordination vows required me to support or keep quiet about such behaviour. In that conversation, my eyes were opened to the insidious corruption in the way power was exercised in the church. This was 1989. Discussions about whistleblowing were quite common in the health service. We didn't call it safeguarding in those days but assertions that 'we didn't know about safeguarding back then' are disingenuous. We certainly knew that some kinds of behaviour were wrong and posed risk of serious harm to vulnerable people. We knew they should be called out, investigated and fairly dealt with.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I returned to nursing. But the church has a reach that's hard to escape. It wasn't long before I gave in to pressure 'to forgive' and 'to remain faithful' and returned to ministry. Over the next twenty five years as a theological college lecturer, a parish priest, an archdeacon and a dean, I witnessed and experienced further abuses of power in both stark and hidden ways. Perhaps the most worrying aspect was the unwillingness of people (all sorts of people but especially some in authority) to face unpleasant or difficult truths. This would usually end with the person raising the issue being belittled, blamed or excluded. There was a deep-seated cultural tendency to think that, as long as things appeared to be all right, awkward testimonies could be ignored or downplayed. Reputations were put before facts. Sometimes wrong simply wasn't acknowledged as wrong.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">To get back to that morning in the cathedral, there was something about the play of the sun and rainclouds through the nave windows that helped me see that every person stands either in shadow or in light. You can step from one to another but in order to do that you have to make a decision and take an action. I would have stayed, I longed to stay, ministry was where I had made my life. And yet?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In the words of the psalmist, I asked myself, 'How much longer?' For twenty seven years I had mostly done as the church had conditioned me. When witnessing abuses of power and the appalling treatment of those who speak out I had tried to protest but often given up too easily, accepting at face value assurances that 'steps were being taken'. I had not followed through sufficiently effectively to support those justly complaining of behaviour that not only would not be tolerated in wider society but that is, to quote IICSA, in contravention of the 'moral purpose' of the church. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">So finally I chose to step out of the shadow and step away. I had believed I could help to make a difference for all those years but the evidence really was that little had changed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Why am I writing this now? Well, because I see so many within the church doing what I have sometimes done in the past. Seeing but not acting effectively. Suspecting and feeling helpless. Wringing hands but being reluctant and slow to change. Thinking 'it's awful but it's not something that happens here'. I read reactions from bishops that show, even after 5 years of IICSA, the Ball case, the Bell, Smyth and Fletcher allegations, the suicide of a survivor and numerous other convictions and complaints, they don't get it. They don't feel personally responsible and they are insufficiently motivated, as the leaders of the church, to take decisive action. I hear clergy, while complaining about other aspects of the church's attitude to </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">power and sexuality in relation to themselves and their ministries, say, 'This is blown out of proportion; it happens everywhere, not just the church.' I hear lay people, even in dioceses that have had significant numbers of convictions, say, 'It doesn't happen here, really. It's just a few bad apples.' Imagine, for a moment, this was any other charity. If leaders, employees and volunteers responded to a report on abuse in the organisation by saying, 'We ourselves are not taking responsibility, it all happened elsewhere, in parts of the organisation that are beyond our control', people would rightly walk away from the charity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Andrew Graystone, who has been something of a champion for survivors of abuse in the Church of England, posed a question that spoke to me. 'Don't comment,' he said, 'before telling us what action you have taken to prevent further abuse happening.' In the years since I left ministry I have tried to educate myself about what happened. I've attended AGMs of various organisations that support survivors where I've learned a great deal (some of it very shocking) from survivors and lawyers. I'm training as a psychotherapist and seeing in my placements the life-long effects of abuse. I'm writing and I'm engaged in an arts project that seeks to explore the connection between certain kinds of theology and the use and abuse of power in the churches.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Is it too much to ask that the Church of England and the Church in Wales step out of their shadows and take speedy, transparent, effective action in the light of IICSA's recommendations? At the very least, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Mandatory reporting.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Independent oversight of safeguarding including, crucially, the bishops' role.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Prompt, thorough investigation by transparent, consistent, properly administered processes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Compensation and funded therapy for survivors.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Full acceptance of responsibility. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Investigation into how power is exercised - what is explicit and underpinned by theologies, </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">what is tolerated, and what unconsciously motivated behaviours are present? </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-66349858490093416162020-07-20T06:49:00.022-07:002021-01-18T06:09:26.464-08:00A New Normal: Beyond Mere Post-COVID Aspiration<div><font><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uzEiEPwlSaw/XxWfYtIgW-I/AAAAAAAAETw/KrODOOdSu64yrzHZHOTtpnRyF4LbMvhPgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/FullSizeRender.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="In Celtic" border="0" data-original-height="1530" data-original-width="2048" height="239" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uzEiEPwlSaw/XxWfYtIgW-I/AAAAAAAAETw/KrODOOdSu64yrzHZHOTtpnRyF4LbMvhPgCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h239/FullSizeRender.jpg" title="In Celtic" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In Celtic mythology birds are messengers between this world and the next, <br />aiding mortals on their spiritual and earthly journeys<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table></font></div><font face="arial" size="4"><p style="text-align: left;">For days I've been wracking my brains for something remotely positive to say about where we find ourselves as a country. Despite all the premature rhetoric about a new normal and opportunities to do things differently, we seem to be plunging headlong and somewhat blindly back into the economic-growth-driven life we were used to. 'It'll all be over by Christmas,' proclaims the Prime Minister. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="arial">It seems we've arrived at a place where it's necessary to decide whether we believe the government or the scientists advising them. <span>The government's top priority is getting the economy to work again; all else, including scientific and medical concerns, is subordinate. Scientists tell us that unless we modify our behaviour the pandemic will overwhelm us again (and possibly again and again) leading to many thousands more deaths. If you are healthy and have lost your income I can well understand the inclination to follow the government. If you or a family member is vulnerable because of your health, or if you have lost a loved one, then the scientific advice will be compelling. Of course, we all understand that. It really shouldn't be science versus politics but the government's approach is tending in that direction.</span></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="arial">What we seem to have discovered during lockdown is that our economy is heavily dependent on selling products and services that are not essential. We have discovered desperately divided social structures that limit access by some sections of society to essential commodities such as food, a roof over your head, education and social care. We have discovered that those who lack ready access to these commodities are far more vulnerable to the virus and that large numbers of people whose work ensures the provision of essential supplies and health care for others come from this section of society and are very poorly paid indeed.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="arial">Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves at the moment is this. In the light of what we have had to change over the past four months, what have we learned to do without and how can we capture that space permanently in ways that make it possible for us to give back into society? Less travel, less food, less choice, less security, less doing what we please, less waste? More time, more self sufficiency (as regards food), more focus, more living in the moment, more sharing, more setting aside our own interests to care for others? How can we purposefully redirect our lives? That may be the question uppermost for those of us who have not felt the pain of losing someone. For those of us who have suddenly lost a loved one Morgan Matson's line about '<i>a thousand moments that I had just taken for granted mostly because I assumed there would be a thousand more</i>' may be the kind of sentiment that fills our days and nights. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="arial">We seem, as a society, to have glossed over the grief and the deaths of the past four months surprisingly hastily. For the individuals who have lost their lives and for their families, 2020 has taken a devastatingly unexpected and final turn. Yet I haven't been very conscious of hearing or seeing the recognition, let alone the compassion, that this tragedy might have led us to expect. When we think more civilians have died of COVID-19 since March 2020 than were killed in the six years of the Second World War, we might begin to ask ourselves what those 45,000 people might have said to us and what they might wish to see as their legacy. They mostly died frightened, struggling to breathe or sedated, and separated from their loved ones, their lives cut short with little time to prepare. Many were depending on practical and medical help; for some it materialised, for others it did not. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="arial">Our country has been very persistent in remembering the wartime dead. Perhaps it's too soon to make any judgements about how our COVID dead will be remembered but we need to begin to face the question. Since March many of us have had to think about putting advance care plans and final wishes into writing, talking to relatives and medics about what we would like to happen should we become terminally ill and die. It's not an easy subject to address, not always a comfortable conversation to have with family. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="arial">If we haven't already, we might begin to ask ourselves how we would wish our collective passing to be marked on the broader canvas of history. How should so many deaths impact society? One of the best memorials to the COVID dead might surely be a determined national effort to eradicate homelessness and destitution, hunger and extreme poverty. Another might be to reform the social care system and, more radically, to allow the insights of care to pervade our politics. <a href="https://viamedia.news/2020/06/02/we-cant-go-back-to-not-caring-about-care/">ViaMedia.News</a> has been publishing a series of blogposts entitled 'We Can't Go Back...' Alison Webster, Deputy Director of Social Responsibility in the Oxford Diocese writes, <br /></font><i style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><font face="arial">'We need an economy that reflects a different reality. One that serves not just the ableist autonomy of the few, but the vulnerability and interdependence of the many. An economy based on good love. Good love invests time. Good love connects. Good love brings us out of ourselves. Good love recognises that everyone has needs, and everyone has something precious to give. We need to move towards this economy now. Covid 19 has taught us this. It has shown us the need to de-atomise ourselves, so that all of us get to participate in the world outside our windows, even if we cannot go outside.'</font></i></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="arial"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">Moving from aspiration to action is a difficult journey. Like those who have died form COVID-19 we go about our everyday lives expecting that we have time to make adjustments. Their deaths show us how important it is to live in the minute and, if we have an idea about something we could do, to act on it today. It might seem small, it might seem that it won't make much difference and nobody will notice, but if it is done out of love to honour someone who has died, it will take root in our own lives and contribute to a wider effort to shape a new normal.</span><span> </span></font></p></font>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-59665862827714783852020-06-18T03:01:00.001-07:002020-06-29T10:26:20.575-07:00What will You Carry Out of Lockdown?<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Lockdown has been an interesting experience. In one sense nothing much has changed for me. I work in a Care Home two days a week so I've been going to work as normal. We locked down early and, so far, we've been fortunate in not having any cases of coronavirus. Staff have undertaken to isolate themselves at home, not going out apart from when they come to work. So the 'at home' part of my life has become outwardly much more constrained. There's been plenty of opportunity for relaxation, reading, gardening, meditation, walking in the countryside around our house. I can feel the stress of many years melting away with the significant reduction in pressure to do things, meet people, respond to requests and invitations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Something that's kept me energised and positive has been the new balance in my life. Two days of purposeful busy-ness and five of reflective spaciousness has felt good. Encounters with other people have been less frequent but deeper. Old friendships have been renewed. I've appreciated the clear challenges at work. It's been obvious what needs to be achieved quickly in response to the virus and the main frustration has been finding the necessary resources. I've been aware that for those working from home for the first time, furloughed or made redundant there may have been less of a sense of work as an 'anchor'. From colleagues in ministry in the various churches, I've picked up a degree of 'overwhelm' in terms of opportunity to prioritise and do things differently; for some this has bordered on an existential crisis. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Finding myself in a place of heightened practical <i>and</i> reflective response to a crisis has been an unusual and extremely interesting experience. Over the weeks themes have emerged for me that have predominantly been around questions of justice and work. What is the true place of work in our lives and in society? The COVID-19 crisis has thrown up anomalies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Care work is extremely poorly paid, often at or below the minimum wage. Every day an army of unseen workers cares for the very elderly, the very young and people with disabilities; this crisis has suddenly rendered them more than normally visible. Many have not been paid when they themselves have fallen ill with the virus or have had to isolate. (Care is often paid on an hourly basis with no provision for sick pay by employers.) Meanwhile other workers have been furloughed on 80% pay and have reported 'boredom' or a sense of being on an 'extended holiday.' I'm glad that people have been furloughed rather than losing their jobs and pleased that they have found refreshment amid the anxiety. But the situation has thrown into sharp relief questions about how we value work, particularly the kinds of work the we all rely on heavily to support our lives. Care is just one example. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">So how do we evaluate different kinds of work?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Skill is not perhaps the most helpful measure. It's too blunt an instrument. Justice-for-worker questions may sound more like this</span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who works in ways that are essential for survival?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who responds effectively to needs?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who brings greater quality of life to most people?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who has resilience and stickability?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who enables others to contribute?</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Our attitudes to work in the economies of the developed world tend to be focused on a contrasting set of questions</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who can generate market place needs?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who is effective in suppressing economically inconvenient needs?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who generates quality for those who can pay most?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who demonstrates ability to move on?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">who enables me to do what I want?</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Quaker, William Penn observed that 'true silence is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment'. It takes a well-nourished soul to meet survival needs, bringing depth and quality to all one does, turning up to do it come what may and allowing others space to do the same. A year or so after I started attending Quaker meeting one of the young Quakers asked me what had changed for me as a result of immersion in silence. I quickly thought of the intangibles - I was calmer, more focused, I'd become more attentive in listening and more measured in responding. But, as I thought about it, I was surprised to recognise more tangible changes too - I'd joined a political party, started gardening (which I used not to enjoy), taken on training as a psychotherapist. I'd not directly connected any of these tangible changes with Quaker silence but I now realised that it was the quality of the silence I was experiencing that had enabled them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The silence and quiet of lockdown has thrown up many questions, insights, glimmers of the ways things could be different; it has pointed me toward some of the actions needed to initiate and sustain this difference. There have been shifts in perspective, shifts in the balance of my life, shifts in what I find I truly need. These, I feel, are the things to value and take forward. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">One thing I will certainly be taking forward is my work to reform our Social Care system. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Those who care for our loved ones - our youngest children and our elderly parents - provide the basic 'oil in the engine' that allows society to function. This 'oil' is the ability of ordinary people to go about their business every day knowing that their family will be cared for at affordable cost by well-motivated, competent, compassionate people. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Historically 'care' has been the job of the family, often the women in the family. It is no great surprise that one of our lowest paid sectors arises from a trajectory of 'women's work'. Over centuries the role of women in caring has been transferred from the clan, to the family, to the churches, to the social services and health care agencies without any rigorous evaluation of the qualities and skills involved or the intrinsic value of their worth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a society we simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs about care. On the one hand it's something anyone can do - don't parents do it all the time for their children? No special training or resources necessary! On the other hand it's something about which lots of people say 'I couldn't do that for all the tea in China.' Too much patience needed, too many menial tasks involved! Put the two attitudes together and you have a profession that is not thought of as requiring much resourcing or training, where most people do not wish to think about its reality in too much detail and do not listen to the voices or wisdom of those engaged in it. So the myth that there is a plentiful supply of 'angels' who will instinctively do this sort of work, not for the pay, but simply because they love doing it is perpetuated. And 'society' feels very comfortable about that!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A friend recently said to me during a Zoom conversation, 'We no longer live in a society, we live in an economy.' What would it take to turn us into a society of communities motivated by care? We are so far from prioritising care at the moment (a symptom of this being the neglect of Care Homes' voices and needs during the pandemic) that a colossal shift of perspective is required. This will involve putting insights that come from care alongside and sometimes over and above those that come from the creation of market forces. In such a new perspective success may be seen in terms of making people feel genuinely good about themselves, appreciating what they have to offer rather than seeing only what they own and can or can't buy; not measuring them according to externally generated criteria drawn from the need always to create wealth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I've watched really experienced care workers. They attend to their clients. They read the signs and learn what makes a person feel cared for (as opposed to making assumptions about what a person needs based on their own needs.) Here's a small example: at our Care Home there's a group of staff who take infinite care to work out what a resident might like for their birthday. The genuine delight on the face of a person as they open their present or go out for their treat is testimony to the times they get it right. That same approach underlies all profound care. It is the care we experience in the heart of the Divine, to be known so well that the joy within us is liberated and flows out to others. There is no price that can be put on that kind of care. It is a quality our society badly needs and it isn't until we learn to value it that we will begin to have a just relationship with work. </span><br />
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Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-19047813933558828202020-06-05T15:11:00.001-07:002020-06-05T15:11:41.018-07:00Benjamin Zephaniah - Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vaH2XO7z4l4" width="480"></iframe>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-70980695930043395502020-06-05T07:34:00.002-07:002020-06-12T04:31:47.819-07:00Thinking About George Floyd<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The name George Floyd has gone down in history and will not be forgotten. I have been so appalled by his murder I have found it difficult to write anything. As a white person I am all too conscious that I should listen more than speak, but I also know that not to speak at all is to condone violence and oppression.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We are wrong, in the UK, if we allow ourselves to think that what we are seeing unfold in the United States is solely an American problem with roots in American history. We have racism built into the fabric of our society in the UK, too, albeit with some slightly different emphases. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don't have to think very hard or move from my desk or even do any research to come up with stories that show this to be true.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I've nursed alongside black nurses and heard the demeaning comments, jokes, 'compliments' ('she's very kind for one of <i>them</i>'). I've watched the government refuse the right to remain to black people who have served, by invitation, in industries and sectors that would not have survived without them, living their whole lives in Britain. I've read books and watched TV programmes that show the extent to which slavery of black people created the wealth on which much of the British industrial revolution was based. I've seen how people assume the black person in the group is the student (not the teacher), the offender (not the lawyer), the committee member (not the chair). I've seen a group of students demolish or ignore the contribution of the black people in the group because they don't see it as relevant to their experience. I've been laughed at by students for putting books written by black theologians on an essay booklist. I've sat tight lipped but silent when friends and family have made derogatory remarks and jokes about people of other ethnic origins. I've seen mixed race friends denied the freedom to celebrate part of their heritage, 'we think of you as white'. I've done and said things that have demeaned black people without thinking and found it difficult to listen to the rebuke; and so I ask how often have I got away without rebuke because my black friend was too gracious or too weary or too angry?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I know very little - and I want to understand more. My own ethnicity is White Welsh British. I look white but I speak a minority language and belong to a people who are regularly the butt of stereotypes and jokes. 'Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief'. The drip-drip frustration of constantly hearing your language and culture belittled damages your pride in yourself and your heritage and puts you on the back foot. Do I defend, challenge or let it go? I cannot imagine living with that 'on-the-back-foot' experience repeated over and over in almost every aspect of your life - your appearance, your access to opportunity, your freedom of movement and speech, your education, the job market, only having the 'right' to exist at the cost of other people's supposed 'right' to make you the focus of a joke or a comment. The less space you are given the more energy it takes to stand, to be, to refuse to shrink, to judge every situation with just the right balance of challenge and grace. I have had a glimpse of how exhausting that might be. And I feel a tiny glimmer of the cumulative pain. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The events of this week in the USA are indescribably disturbing. As a white person I feel inhibited to contribute and I invite correction and comment for anything I have said that misrepresents or distorts. But I reflect maybe there are a few ways I, as a white person, can work for change. </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Always listen to the experience of black people more than speak of my reaction.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Be honest about my reaction to myself and, where invited, to my black friends.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Never let a demeaning or racially offensive comment go, never join in a joke or let one pass.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Make it a priority to learn about and from other cultural perceptions, especially those that are very unfamiliar.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Immerse myself in black history and draw attention to black perspectives that contradict or amplify the dominant white story. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Explore variety in other cultures and avoid joining in anything that stereotypes a race or nationality.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In my own discipline of theology, I'm currently reading <a href="https://theglobalchurchproject.com/african-women-theologians-you-should-know-about/?fbclid=IwAR02hUz2Njk6TsgRTGqrqQrg2_luD9l_CyGp52h9k4cBFUDyXHzoXiEGM4w">Nine African Women Theologians You Should Know About</a> by Stephanie Lowery (with thanks to my friend Revd Ade Lawal for recommending it.) Donald Trump's actions this week have shown how Christianity can be highjacked and used in quite dreadful ways and this has been a shocking reminder of how theology has been used to oppress black people. It is ever more pressing that every theological institution takes seriously and teaches black perspectives in theology.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm also reading <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Black_and_British.html?id=uijbCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Black and British: A Forgotten History</a> by David Olusoga. My parents worked in Ghana and I know that I have inherited a one-sided version of the history of Britain's relationship to the many countries in which today's black British communities have roots. I've been re-educated powerfully by Olusoga's work on the influence of slavery on Liverpool. I've been shocked to discover slavery's foundational impact on the whole British economy through the extent to which wealth was created for white people (but not black) by compensation when slaves were 'freed'. See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut5gtrezN4E">here</a> for Olusoga's introduction to black British history, 'the history we are not taught in schools.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Racist behaviour does not spring only from contemporary attitudes but from deep-seated inequalities, exploitations and oppressions that are not acknowledged in popular versions of history or theology. That is as true in the UK today as it is in the USA and George Floyd's death should disturb us in Britain a very great deal. </span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-83726453826386738252020-05-17T11:15:00.001-07:002020-05-18T07:27:04.987-07:00Why Repeat Social Care Mistakes with COVID-19 In Schools? <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Back in March, incredulous care workers were listening to their distressed managers coming out of meetings in which plans to 'safely' discharge elderly people from hospital into care homes had been outlined. If regulations and guidelines were followed, there would be minimal danger of transmitting COVID-19 - and, of course, there was all this stuff called PPE everyone expected to see delivered any day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">All our experience of working with the elderly plus our gut instinct told us something was amiss. What was being suggested was risky, dangerous and, to say the very least, taking a capricious liberty with the lives and manner of death of vulnerable people. I am not writing this with the benefit of hindsight. At the time many of us made protests. I wrote to my MP and the CQC. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Had we known then that patients who might be or were infected with COVID-19 would routinely be sent to care homes where there was no particular expertise in nursing highly contagious diseases, no PPE and no facilities for isolation, we would have shouted a lot louder. Had we known that GPs would not be allowed to visit and no provision would be made for proper palliative care in some cases, we would have swung from the trees and yelled. We accepted the situation with huge trepidation because we knew these lovely, trusting, vulnerable, elderly people needed to be cared for. We drew up the very best plans we could in the circumstances. Many homes went to extreme lengths with staff voluntarily isolating themselves from family for long periods, living in caravans and tents and making their own PPE.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was a disaster. We had known it would be. Although many elderly people have been successfully shielded, on May 15th the BBC reported more than 18,000 excess deaths in care homes in England and Wales during April <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52284281">here</a>. Members of the Social Care work force are twice as likely as the general population (including NHS workers) to have died <a href="https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/what-has-been-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-care-homes-and-social-care-workforce">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now, the government seems to be making a similar miscalculation about schools. With the reproduction rate (R) scarcely below 1 for a few days, this reckless government has issued guidelines for social distancing in schools, keeping children in 'bubbles' which prevent transmission between too many households. These guidelines are being challenged by teachers who say that they are simply not workable. The teachers have powerful representative organisations (unlike carers) to speak up for them. The BMA has lent its support to voices that are saying <i>not</i>, 'we don't want to go back to school' but 'we don't think it's safe to send reception class pupils back to school, in this way, now'. Experience, gut instinct and scientific data are all crying out, 'this is very risky.' </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am no expert in children's health but I do know that there are a whole range of studies that suggest we do not accurately know the extent to which COVID-19 affects children. Nor do we know the extent to which children transmit the disease. There have been studies in China <a href="https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2020/03/16/peds.2020-0702.1">here</a> and elsewhere <a href="https://www.e-cep.org/journal/view.php?doi=10.3345/cep.2020.00535">here</a> but the research is at an early stage and they mostly show what we do not yet know rather than draw definitive conclusions. A syndrome has been identified where children who have had the disease later develop an inflammatory condition that has landed some in ICU <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/multisystem-inflammatory-syndrome-in-children-and-adolescents-with-covid-19">here</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We all know the extent to which children bring infections home from school, especially the youngest. A friend's family was affected when her sons contracted the virus at school in March. They were, thankfully, not very ill, but Mum and Dad (a doctor and an agricultural scientist) caught it and were off work for weeks. I've just watched a Conservative MP's youtube video describing the approach to distancing that puts children into groups or 'bubbles' of 15 with a teacher. Should someone contract the disease, only the 'bubble' and their families would need to isolate. If each child has even four people in their family, this would result in over 60 people isolating for 7-14 days or perhaps much longer, many of whom could be vulnerable or might be key workers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Children have to get back to school but every instinct and a lot of evidence is shrieking '1st June is too soon.' Why experiment with the safety of our youngest children? (In many countries with excellent educational results, they would not be in school until they were 7.) Why not wait until R has been consistently below 1 for weeks rather than days? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Teachers are not raising objections because they are cowardly, lazy or obstructive. They are raising professional concerns because they instinctively know that we are taking a huge risk with the well-being of children and families. Just as the carers were back in March, they are extremely worried that the regulations and guidelines they are being given are inadequate to contain the infection and, worse, that all the factors relevant to the situation have not been properly considered. They do not want to see unnecessary deaths or the permanent disabling of children or parents who contract the disease. They remember the false assurances given in early March that it was 'very unlikely the virus would be transmitted to care homes' even as care homes were beginning to report that it <i>was</i> being transmitted. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Teachers and carers have one thing in common. They look after the most vulnerable and the most precious members of society - our children, our parents, those who are abused, those who have dementia, those who have disabilities and are disadvantaged. Most disgracefully, this week, parts of the press have turned on teachers. Regularly, the same parts of the press attack carers who are among the lowest paid and least trained workers in society for alleged dereliction of duty over conditions in care homes. The truth underlying such attitudes is that, as a society, we have become so focused on economic growth and workplace productivity that we have no interest in resourcing and supporting those who do the kinds of work that shore up the quality of our children's and parents' lives. We give lip service to the importance of education and the crucial role of teachers; we clap and call care workers 'heroes' as we send them to look after the dying with no protective equipment. We do not listen to them, we do not take their advice, we do not resource them properly. We allow them to be invisible and disparaged and then we blame them for not overcoming the difficulties our demands place upon them. In failing them, we let down the very people we say we love and value most. A civilised society, at the very least, funds care for its infants and its dying and we have failed the test for the latter. Do not let us fail it for the former.</span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-72586034523361761382020-05-11T04:21:00.002-07:002021-07-23T08:55:12.049-07:00Changing the Narrative on COVID-19<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This little mask is one I have been supplied with to use at work. I have to save it in a plastic bag and reuse it for the same client each time I visit. For 4 weeks I have worn this mask on 12 separate occasions for an hour at a time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have been placed in a position where there are three possible narratives I can tell myself about my companion mask. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">1) 'I must wear it as directed because it is the policy of my employer and I would be at fault not to do so.' (This is what I have done.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">2) 'I should not wear it as to do so under these conditions is a hazard. I am likely to pass on infection or become infected myself by repeatedly wearing a dirty mask. To comply with a policy that research shows may result in harm goes against my duty of care to clients and my training as a nurse.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">3) 'I should speak out about the fact that professionals who need PPE are being forced to implement unsatisfactory policies based on specious information and I should campaign for improvement.' (I am also doing this.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's immensely stressful to abide by what you know to be a false narrative.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">These three narratives co-incide with the possible positions each of us has been placed in by the government. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">1) 'I must follow government lockdown-easing guidelines because not to do so would break the law or breach public trust.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">2) 'I should not follow government guidelines where they create an infection hazard to myself or others and can be shown to depart from properly researched supporting evidence.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">3) 'I should support campaigns to call out incorrect information and unsatisfactory policies.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Narratives 2 and 3, of course, invite official censure and disciplinary action - dismissal (in the case of masks) or sanctions or a fine (in the case of government guidelines). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Narrative 1 ought to be the path we could all follow but there's a problem with it. It's becoming increasingly obvious to a large proportion of the population that this narrative is failing because it is a <i>false</i> narrative, requiring us to act in ways based on skewed interpretations of scientific evidence. The government can see that, due to its earlier decisions, it is losing power to control events and that, now, it is beginning to lose control of the narrative about what is happening. The only option then becomes to change the narrative as the Prime Minister did last night. Last night's change of direction was not about infection control or about economic expediency, it was about spin. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now that the message has changed from 'stay at home' to 'keep alert', the responsibility for what happens has passed to the individual. It is now <i>my</i> responsibility and <i>your</i> responsibility to prevent the spread of the virus, despite the fact that the tools we need to do so have been found missing, wanting, absent or, in the case of the moderately clear messages about lockdown, have just been pulled from under our feet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The CQC guidelines tell me, 'if you carry out procedures' <i>properly</i> then there will be minimal risk', the implication being that if I or a client get infected it will be due to my failure to use a mask properly. The government is now telling us 'if you go to work or school and social distance on crowded public transport remaining alert at all times, we can keep R below 1', the implication being that, if we <i>don't</i>, it is due to the failure of the general public.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">At some point and by some means we have to be able to say, <b>'No. You are asking us to play roulette with the nation's health.' </b>You have imposed policies that are the worst of all worlds. The lockdown is massively damaging to the economy (a price most of us thought worth paying to safeguard health), yet you are starting to lift precautions before R (the infection rate) has been consistently below 1 for longer than the incubation period of the infection, thus potentially throwing away all the advantage of the lockdown.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-83008602965255380242020-05-04T02:44:00.002-07:002020-05-04T06:40:09.925-07:00Resurrection Hope<div class="_5pbx userContent _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-testid="post_message" id="js_1j7" style="color: #1c1e21; line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 6px;">
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This Easter I have been very conscious of the words Jesus spoke to Mary Magdalene when she first recognised Him and went to embrace Him after His resurrection. 'Do not touch me.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">So apt for our strange times on a practical level.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">On a spiritual level, also apt. Jesus was risen and that was a cause for joy. But he was telling Mary, 'Things are not going to be the same as they were before.' The resurrection changes everything, you will be different, you will find joy and purpos<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">e and new life, but the future will be new. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Today, for many, perhaps all of us, the future will not be as we expected, but it is there for the shaping and hope, faith and love will triumph.</span></div>
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Christ is risen!</div>
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The image is by He Qi, a Chinese artist, <i>Do Not Hold On To Me</i>.</div>
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Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-3081909288741914762020-04-05T12:23:00.002-07:002020-04-27T13:19:51.528-07:00COVID-19: Perspective From The Past<div class="_5pbx userContent _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-testid="post_message" style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 6px;">
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">On a pine-clad hill with views of the rolling Nottinghamshire countryside near where we live, you come across the Polish Cross Memorial, a memorial to the first men of the Masovian Squadron who were killed, returning from a flight in 1940.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sitting in the quiet wood, I felt very connected to my parents' and grandparents' generations. In youth and middle age, across the whole of Europe and across the world, their life was disrupted by separation from loved ones and by being sent to do things they did not want to do, maybe did not agree with. In living and dying, they depended on others, often strangers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">They shaped for us a future which was more peaceful than anything they had known, not perfect but better. Less war, better health care, basic pensions and welfare available to many.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We are not fighting each other, we have it in our power to do what is asked of us and we can emerge from this with better values, recognising that the lives we all enjoy often depend heavily on the unseen and costly actions of others.</span><br />
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Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-9562805926971914522020-02-24T10:34:00.004-08:002022-03-11T06:36:16.924-08:004IR, the Wellbeing Agenda and the New Politics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Britain feels to me like a country that has lost its grip on reality. We are sorely divided with people living in different bubbles of delusion while flinging insults at those who are not part of their bubble. </span><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">On social media you can flick from the sunlit uplands - 'We'll be living a prosperous dream now we're free of the EU' - to doom laden depths - 'Democracy is fighting for survival with the media and judiciary under attack'. There are two very different types of nostalgia on offer - Type 1, 'Britain has stood alone and will be great again,' and Type 2, 'Life in the EU was full of wonderful opportunities and the sooner we rejoin the better.'</span><br />
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Then there are the more personal lines of attack, 'It's democracy, get over it,' 'You only see it like that because you read the <i>insert name of paper,</i>' or 'You voted that way because you're uneducated and don't understand the consequences.' </span><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">If you mostly read one type of propaganda you can feel quite optimistic. It's all about positioning ourselves globally so we can prosper by capitalising on the AI and robotics revolution. New wealth and jobs will filter into the economy and we are on the brink of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Conversely, you can begin drawing up plans for emigration (or a move to Scotland) if you read other sources. It's the end of the welfare state as we've known it, the economy is doomed, free movement and necessary migration have been halted and the government is secretive and out of control.</span><br />
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">What we seem to have lost is a sense that we are all in this together. The country has taken an enormous risk at a time when, globally, the known order of things is shifting in unpredictable ways. We are all responsible for the future we create. I find myself searching rather forlornly for groups, organisations, communities that are engaging in informed ways with the reality of the changes that lie ahead. </span><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">We seem to have revised many of the previously defining categories that provided our landscape. In political terms 'conservative', 'liberal' and 'labour' appear to have taken on new meanings. It appears that to align yourself with current Conservatism is to be in favour of radical change and to be very right-wing. The liberal project appears to be floundering, partly as a result of the tensions that its own generosity to diversity breeds; there is a new sense that people don't trust Liberals. The Labour movement appears no longer to represent the interests and concerns of the working class and perhaps we are not even sure we can define groups by the kinds of work they have (or don't have) any more. Nationalism and regionalism are increasingly seen as ways out of intractable difficulties over the distribution of resources and power. Other than the fact we all inhabit the same little archipelago of islands, there appear to be few shared values that hold us together and our political landscape is undergoing some kind of revolution.</span><br />
<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Without intending to be (she thought she was making a philosophical point), Margaret Thatcher was prophetic when she said 'There is no such thing as society.' What is 'society' the new British way? Some fundamental issues need addressing and a key question to ask is,'What does it mean to be human today on these islands?' It's as fundamental as that. What basic needs do we share? How can we meet them? What does almost every person value?</span><br />
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">When we address our future in these terms, we come up with things like</span><br />
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<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">a symbiotic relationship with the environment that supports our existence</span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">food, warmth and a roof over our heads in a variable climate</span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">provision of basic care and treatment in sickness and around giving birth and dying </span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">a means of earning </span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">education in the skills that are needed in our society and an appreciation of our common roots</span><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"> </span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">dignity and respect whatever our origins</span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">freedom of speech and action tempered by the protection of laws that define and uphold limits for the good of the many</span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">compassion - both directed toward ourselves, especially when vulnerable <i>and</i> the capacity not to be so self-obsessed that we cannot show care for others</span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">space for creativity, invention, imagination, uniqueness</span></li>
<li><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">means of engaging in travel and trade</span></li>
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">This picture does not accurately reflect my experience of British priorities today. We have a society where increasing numbers of people are excluded from even these basics. Different groups suffer in different ways - some lack food and a home, others lack care in their dying days, others experience their education as anything but conducive to creativity, others have no access to work and others lack basic respect due to difference or characteristics they can do nothing about. This happens in all societies. But today's levels of inequality in Britain are beginning to destroy us. We seem to have set our face to ensure, or perhaps turn a blind eye to, increasingly uneven levels of inclusion and provision. We have collectively said, 'That's OK.' We share no humanity that causes us to ask, 'What risks are acceptable to take with other people's lives and work?' 'Are there levels of cost-at-others'-expense to which we will not stoop?' We have moved to a place where our values are shaped by the overall wealth the country can generate and the conditions for this are set by those who will profit the most at the expense of those who will not profit at all.</span></div>
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">There is no nice way to say this, Britain has become a place where greed, actual and aspirational, rampages unchecked while quality of life for many goes mostly unattended to. When teachers tell stories of washing clothes and feeding pupils before they can teach, someone will say, 'Well good for them, teachers have always done this.' When carers say, 'We need more resources,' they are told, 'Soon we'll have robots to do most of your work.' </span><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">I'll be honest. I don't see leaving the EU as a sensible way to create a better future for Britain. However, there are many issues about our commonality (or lack of it) that urgently supersede the debate about whether we should have done it and the means by which it came about. The fact that we did it is one symptom among others of the very concerning malaise that pervades British life today.</span></div>
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">If it is true that the world is entering a Fourth Industrial Revolution at a time of ecological crisis for the planet, Britain needs urgently to make changes in its habitual ways of categorising, thinking and participating. A new humane politics is needed that is a far cry from the political developments we see currently in the Johnson government or among opposition parties.</span><br />
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Last autumn, the Prime (First) Ministers of Iceland, New Zealand and Scotland put forward a proposal for a new way of looking at the performance of governments <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2019/12/04/well-being-agenda-does-this-spell-the-end-for-gdp">here</a>. In their <i>Well Being Agenda</i> measurements of GDP take second place to, or at least are considered alongside, indicators of sustainability and equity. GDP is put alongside its cost to the environment and its effect in creating inequality. Factors that take into account well-being and happiness for the whole population have as much weight as the raw creation of financial wealth. The argument is not that GDP does not matter, but that its importance must be balanced by other indicators when it comes to assessing the overall success of a government or the health of a country. This is not dissimilar to the kinds of priority found in the Scandinavian countries and Finland. More detail can be read about this challenge to conventional economics on the <a href="https://wellbeingeconomy.org/">Wellbeing Economy</a> website and in Professor Alister McGregor's recent book <i>Well Being, Resilience and Sustainability: A New trinity of Governance.</i></span><br />
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">I am struck by a very sharp contrast between the contribution women make to the governments employing this new approach and the overwhelmingly male composition of the British government and parliament. The recent furore over the hiring of a government minister with statistically-driven views on eugenics highlighted the extent to which government policy is now formed by an elite, largely male group who act on highly rational approaches to statistically based data without drilling down into things like motivation, empirical evidence of consequence or emotional engagement. Their thinking, research and prediction-power is predicated on a startlingly truncated and one sided understanding of life embracing limited fields of experience. In short, our political life manifests a desperate loss of balance - female/male, right brain/left brain, affective/intellectual, symbiotic/autonomous - in terms of ideology, education and experience.</span><br />
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">One of the new political groupings that ought to be emerging in this climate is surely a constituency around sharing and balance, with values drawn from recognition of the emotional bonds that tie us to our planet and bring people together. The dangerous loss of such perspective in Westminster politics accounts for many of the imbalances we see in the way politicians and the media conduct themselves and for many of the features of society that have caused the disillusionment leading to the Brexit vote. We urgently need a feminising and a greening of our political system. The Women's Movement marches that followed the election of Donald Trump have, as yet, failed to live up to their promise in terms of delivering a realistic challenge to mainstream politics. The ecological movement appears to be having a little more impact. One thing that these groupings have achieved is the bringing to light of alternative ways of assessing data and even deciding what data is relevant. As movements they meet with much opposition by dismissal and ridicule (think of Trump's criticisms of Thunberg) but slowly and surely some inadequacies and blinkered attitudes are starting to be be confronted. </span><br />
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<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">The problem with both the climate crisis and British politics is that we do not have much time. The pace of change is measured in years not decades or centuries. There is little point in putting energy into trying to return to a glorified past (of whatever variety). It's equally pointless to expend disproportionate amounts of effort trying to hold to account those who have shown themselves oblivious to laws, rules and codes of ethics. What Britain needs now is people who will grasp the new ways of trading and generating wealth with a firm and vocal commitment to ensuring they deliver sustainability and rising levels of national and international equality. Or to put it more radically, people who demonstrate a commitment to making sure the sustainability of the planet and decreasing inequality between people shape what it is possible to produce and sell. </span><span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<span face=""trebuchet ms" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"> </span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-40248563128501029872020-02-18T07:30:00.000-08:002020-02-19T12:57:42.198-08:00Murky Waters<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Two months into this Government's term of office, what might be called the Sabisky Affair has, perhaps fortuitously, brought to light the darker side of some of the influences that shape thinking going on behind the scenes at Downing Street. And very dark it is too. Who would have guessed, even a year ago, that large chunks of the British media would be having conversations about the rights and wrongs of eugenics and the merits (or otherwise) of research into relative IQ levels reported among different races? More alarmingly, who would have foreseen conversations about whether highly questionable research into such subjects is now shaping Her Majesty's Government's policy formation? For the last forty eight hours I have been pinching myself. This <i>is</i> the British Government we are talking about?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having <i>not </i>woken up and found it's all a bad dream, I've turned to reflecting on the nature of any signs that this was coming. We know we have elected a right-wing, authoritarian Government that wants to overthrow or radically reshape the institutions that hold the balances of power in our democracy. We've observed their increasingly cavalier attitude toward honesty, transparency and shame. It doesn't seem to matter any longer if you are dishonest or even if you are caught out being dishonest: the thing, if you have enough power, is to soldier on in the knowledge nothing can be done to stop you. Last autumn, we saw attempts at holding the Government to account crumble, become relatively meaningless and, more significantly, fail to prevent their re-election. All in all, we appear to be witnessing a slow, determined power grab, aided by parts of the press, over a population that is relatively unaware (for complex reasons that intersect in potent ways) of what is really happening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps what has happened to Sabisky (appointed an adviser to Number Ten then quickly resigning following an outcry about his alleged opinions) has done us a favour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Firstly, it has brought to light the quality of thinking among the Prime Ministers' advisers. It appears inventive, scattered, at times driven by rationality, at others by emotion or intuitive leaps. This makes for flexibility and ingeniousness but also renders it difficult to identify underlying motivations. Motivation becomes an important question because arguments appear to rely on somewhat capriciously chosen research, inadequately, even uncritically, digested by thinkers who do not grasp the full implications of the disciplines they are engaging with. (In the Sabisky case, this has been effectively pointed out online by Adam Rutherford, a geneticist and author of <i>Creation: the Origin of Life </i>and<i> Creation: the Future of Life</i>)<i>.</i> There are some interesting historical parallels with the attitudes and working style of Winston Churchill's wartime adviser, the physicist Frederick Lindemann (quite well summarised on Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Lindemann,_1st_Viscount_Cherwell">here</a>). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Secondly, the Sabisky episode has confirmed publicly what many have suspected, namely that some of the attitudes taken seriously by people influential in Number Ten circles are beyond the scope of conventional morality, or at least any kind of morality that is based on common understandings of virtue and common 'goods' for society. (I think, for example, of the kinds of approaches to ethics taken by philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre or,</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> more popularly, writers such as Iris Murdoch.*) This poses a significant problem. Much of public life is still predicated on assumptions about fairness, decency and honesty and the ultimate subjugation of personal or party ambition to the exercise of these virtues. Yet we are dealing with a group of Government ministers and advisers who do not share such assumptions and do not play by the rules that might be expected to flow from them. Sabisky's appointment may be the wake up call we all needed to realise what is going on. I'm encouraged that just about every part of the press did indeed grasp the outrageous nature of some of the statements he is reported as having made.** Sabisky's resignation may also be the wake up call Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and the cabinet need to realise that there are limits to what the electorate, the press and even their own MPs will tolerate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don't often find myself quoting Margaret Thatcher but she notably said, 'Being democratic is not enough, a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right.' She went on to talk about 'the deep love of liberty' and the rule of law which are certainly things this government might ponder long and hard. But I think she was, in fact, on to something deeper than the question of how we protect our democracy.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> She recognised that there are some values that pervade our humanity and others that destroy it. Protecting ourselves from those that destroy it is the highest calling. Though I am not a Conservative or even, by inclination, a conservative, I recognise some truth in her words. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> it comes to this government planning, discussing or </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">implementing policies influenced by notions of</span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">superiority by dint of race</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the subjugation or objectivisation of women</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">enforced mass control of the bodies and choices of citizens</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">people as 'underclass' groups</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I refuse to tolerate what they are doing. The only reasonable response is to question and expose their intentions and overthrow their actions, if necessary, by every legal means possible. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a child, the first 'grown up' book I read was <i>Anne Frank's Diary. </i>It alerted me to the fact that liberty is very, very fragile. It also showed me how thin can be the veneer of civilisation that keeps us all humane. In Britain, our education system has been poor at helping the past two generations understand what happened across Europe in the 1930's. What we are witnessing with the UK government today worries me greatly because it manifests the same creeping approach to dismantling institutions that need reform. Outwardly this is planned and achieved in the service of the common good, but covertly it is done in the service of undeclared ends that help those with power and wealth accrue much greater power. If you put this alongside bland propaganda and engagement with ideologies of superiority and control, this becomes dangerous.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">While preparing this article, I've come across writing by people connected to Number Ten that is frankly shocking. Indeed some of the press articles I've looked at about attitudes to women have contained warnings about the 'upsetting' nature of the content. I have no intention of giving such ideas the oxygen of publicity by reproducing what was written here. I've been careful to check out sources and contexts. My research has led me to the conclusion that, if we are to resist attempts to control people on grounds of gender, race or questionably measured characteristics like ability and intelligence, the whole electorate must be far more vigilant and politically active than we are used to being in the UK. We can no longer leave it to opposition politicians, the judiciary and the press to hold this Government to account or to keep them within past bounds of decency and honesty. We must all be aware and active. If you are black, or a woman, or have uncertain status as regards nationality, if you are unwaged or on a low income, the impact of factors that are being considered with seriousness and attitudes that are coming to be accepted as normal is somewhere between anxiety-provoking and scary. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">* Some really interesting work has been done on the less discussed virtues of civility, decency, truthfulness and ambition which seems especially relevant to the kind of politics we are seeing in the UK - e.g. Pettigrove 2007 <i>Ambition</i> in <i>Ethical Theory and Moral Practice</i> 10 (1) p.53ff. Colhoun 2000 <i>The Virtue of Civility </i>in <i>Philosophy and Public Affairs </i>29 (3) p.251ff </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">**I'm aware of the debate about the context of some of Sabisky's remarks and that it may be the impact of the remarks as reported rather than the original intention that has caused offence. I think Tom Chivers, in his article "<i>'Eugenics is possible' is not the same as 'eugenics is good'" </i>sums the dilemma up well <a href="https://unherd.com/2020/02/eugenics-is-possible-is-not-the-same-as-eugenics-is-good/">here</a>. He says, </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">'</span></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b1b1b;">I don’t think, as some people do, that these remarks have been “taken out of context”, as such. I think that even with the context, lots of people would still assume that when he says “FGM isn’t a major risk” he means “we don’t need to care about FGM”.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b1b1b;">It’s a translation problem: some people think they’re having a cold, rational discussion; other people are alive to the implications; there will be frequent occasions when the two groups will hear the same words and yet understand totally different things by them.'</span></i></span></div>
Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-92157231751493957622020-01-31T09:36:00.001-08:002020-01-31T09:48:48.451-08:00Woolgathering in North East England: Michael Sadgrove's Blog: Thoughts on Brexit Day<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is the best piece I've seen on the spirituality of the decision to leave the EU. If we are sad, today, as the UK leaves, we should take time to grieve. This <i>is</i> a bereavement for many and, to grieve healthily, we need to express our true feelings. We are not helped to do so (and maybe are not helping ourselves when we join in) by the jingoism of either triumph or disappointed anger all around us. Michael invites us to deep lament where our energies may be renewed and redirected toward working positively among the uncertainties that lie ahead. </span><br />
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<a href="https://northernwoolgatherer.blogspot.com/2020/01/thoughts-on-brexit-day.html?spref=bl">Woolgathering in North East England: Michael Sadgrove's Blog: Thoughts on Brexit Day</a>: This is one of the hardest days of my life. Brexit Day feels like a kind of dying. Born as I was of mixed parentage, to a native Ger...Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-60086299318709822312020-01-27T11:26:00.001-08:002020-01-31T10:38:13.278-08:00Speaking Up: 75 Years After Auschwitz<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yesterday, I went for a swim and a sauna. It's usually a pleasant, relaxing experience with, often, an interesting chat to someone. However, I found myself sharing the sauna with five men and another woman. There was an exchange of what you might call political banter going on. I sat and listened to many things I disagreed with. Then came 'the trouble with the National Health Service is all these f*** foreigners are coming here and using it and not paying a penny..." and 'Boris is going to get it sorted and send them all packing' and 'you'll be able to walk into a pub and not hear b*** gibberish spoken in your own country.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The other woman piped up, 'I don't think you can say that all foreigners are bad.' I tried, 'A lot of people from other countries are on the staff of the NHS, doing much needed jobs.' But I could feel her nervousness and I knew my stomach was knotted as we listened to more diatribes about foreigners and refugees and, yes, women 'who have never had it so good.' It's not easy to stand up for your principles when you are outnumbered by people in close proximity who are loudly and forcefully shooting down what you say in a manner that feels slightly threatening. I don't think we did very well, but we did try.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Today, I've listened to the speeches by survivors of Auschwitz on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by Soviet soldiers. 1.1million Jews, Roma, Polish citizens, homosexuals and Soviet prisoners of war were horribly murdered there. As Marian Turski (a survivor) said, 'Auschwitz did not suddenly fall from the skies'. He was quoting something the Austrian President had said to him that had helped him articulate what he felt. The persecution of Jews, homosexuals, Roma and the disabled happened bit by bit, slowly, slowly, a tiny loss of freedom here (no sitting on these benches), a tiny loss of opportunity there (you have to shop after 5pm), a licence to be derogatory (well it's only them, they don't really matter, they never integrated properly). Turski described how, as a child he observed this process take a hold until such views became part of normality for the perpetrators, the witnesses and the victims.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Eventually the European Jews were crying out for somewhere to flee to safety. Yet nearly every country either rejected them or severely limited the numbers they would accept. 'And that was the point at which Hitler knew he could build his death camps.' The world didn't really care.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Marian Turski spoke of an eleventh commandment that issues from the Shoah (Holocaust). 'Thou shalt not be indifferent.' When you hear lies, when you see governments infringe civil liberties, when you see politicians erode human rights, you must speak out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another survivor, Elza Baker, a Roma, said, <b>'In a time when minorities have to fear again</b> I can only hope that <i>everyone</i> will stand up for democracy and human rights.' Auschwitz did not fall from the skies. Something similar could happen again. Primo Levi wrote, 'This happened which means it may happen again which means it may happen somewhere in the world.' Another Holocaust begins when we turn a blind eye to the erosion of the rights of minorities, when we harden ourselves against the humanity of people who are different from us, when we denigrate groups of people as 'all corrupt' or 'all bad' and, even jokingly, scapegoat them for our own troubles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I fear we live in changing political times. Several of the survivors alluded to this. Only last week the safeguards for child refugees in the EU Withdrawal Agreement were voted down by a majority of 342-254 in the House of Commons. This probably affects about 3,000 refugee children who need to be reunited with families in the UK. A tiny number, yet think of the unspeakable misery of separation and the damage being done to young lives. There is a list of the MPs who voted to remove these safeguards <a href="https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/full-list-of-mps-who-voted-to-abandon-lone-refugee-children-in-brexit-deal/10/01/">here (see bottom of article)</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Currently, the Government has issued a consultation document on 'unauthorised encampments' proposing amendments to the trespass laws that will criminalise the lives of Roma, gypsies and travellers, in effect, leaving them with nowhere to live. Even the police appear to oppose the implementation of new laws saying that the current ones suffice. The Government's document can be seen <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/strengthening-police-powers-to-tackle-unauthorised-encampments">here</a> and a <i>Guardian</i> article by George Monbiot explaining it more fully <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/15/tresspass-trap-law-land-travelling-people-rights">here</a>. Parliamentary scrutiny has effectively been reduced by the Government's somewhat cavalier approach to committee work, its tendency to engage in secret negotiations, its tendency not to publish the detail of proposed policies or answer questions in detail and, ultimately, its enormous majority. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Last week the Church of England bishops issued a statement about civil partnerships and marriage <a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2020-01/Civil%20Partnerships%20-%20Pastoral%20Guidance%202019.pdf">here</a>. The statement makes clear the continued official position of the church which (though somewhat confused) denies the provision of rites for the blessing of civil partnerships or the marriage of same sex couples (paras.17 & 18). Although the bishops acknowledge that there is dissent within the church on the question of recognising and supporting same sex relationships, they continue to uphold as mainstream their rejection. This appears to me to be another of those 'small voices' that normalises or allows the possibility of the objectification and exclusion of a particular group of people who are spoken about, not with.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was moved by the co-incidence of yesterday's conversation in the sauna and today's Holocaust Memorial to return to a question that has haunted me ever since I read the <i>Diary of Anne Frank</i> as a 10 year old. Would I have spoken up for the Jews when others were abusing them? Would I have stood with them? Would I have refused to join in taunting them? Would I have endangered myself to help them? Would I have hidden anyone who was being hunted? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don't know. We none of us know until we are faced by an ugly situation. Judging by my reaction in the sauna, I might have tried tentatively and given up rather lamely. I can see that today, perhaps even more than in the recent past, there is a need to practise those little habits of speaking out, challenging unfounded blame, contradicting hate speech, lobbying for what you believe in, identifying and working with others who are concerned about the right of every human being to be respected, treated with dignity, freed to speak their mind and allowed go about their legitimate business and way of life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Do not be silent when minorities are belittled or attacked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">'Thou shalt not be indifferent.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I hope I have quoted the words of the survivors at the 75th Holocaust Memorial correctly. Some were translated by interpreters and they were written down by me at the time of hearing. I apologise if I have not got the exact words.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-20090247425626581152019-11-11T06:57:00.001-08:002020-01-28T06:07:04.664-08:00To Listen is the Greater Part of Prayer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">How did you learn to pray? My mother taught me. Every night, before bed, we knelt down and said 'thank yous', 'sorrys' and then there was 'please bless...Mummy, Daddy, Nana, Taid, Auntie so and so, Uncle thingumy...' It could go on for quite while.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's not so different from a lot of adult prayer. Some of us go in for sincere, conscientious lists of people and concerns we are committed to. Others go in for the dutiful, disciplined offering of set forms of prayer that mark out the times of day and the seasons. Still others regale the Almighty with desires, believing that if we have enough faith, these desires will somehow become consonant with God's and will therefore 'come to pass' as the scriptures put it. Most of us include genuine expressions of gratitude and regret as we go along the way but a very big chunk of much prayer is either intercessory or liturgical, the former expressing desire and the latter involving the recitation of the words of scripture or a denominational text. When words fail us we have recourse to 'your will be done'. A particular dislike of mine is the pastoral conversation that is directed into prayer when things get a bit tricky; I'm suspicious that there's an unacknowledged agenda or that it's a device for exerting covert pressure to conform.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Recently re-reading a biography of Jung, I was struck by a passage in which he describes overhearing his father (a minister) praying. 'I saw how hopelessly he was entrapped by the church and its theological thinking' (p.20, <i>Jung: A Biography, </i>Gerhard Wehr, 2001). This gave me pause for thought. So much prayer is constrained either by our own semi-acknowledged desires and horizons or by what church tradition has told us it is acceptable to think, feel and say. Much Christian prayer seems to miss out on the truly radical aspect of relationship with the Divine which is listening - listening to ourselves to discover the truth about our innermost motives and our habitual behaviours, listening for the stirring of that which is of God within us, within others and within the political and natural events around us. This takes time, discipline, repetition and a persistent commitment to an openness of attitude that lays aside dogma and systematisation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are many books about this kind of listening (often called contemplation). It's an inward journey, but also a journey shaped by and seen in outward influences. Here are some questions that might prompt us to review how deeply we listen. The more profoundly we listen in everyday life, the more we increase our capacity to listen to God and vice versa. </span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who have you really listened to today?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who has really listened to you and how did you know?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">How often do you find yourself anticipating what's going to be said or thinking about your reply before the speaker finishes?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When did you last hear something that changed you?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When did you last stop to listen to something in the natural world?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What was communicated in the last memo you read?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">How many repetitions does it take you to pick up a short tune?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Do you often forget or mis-hear simple instructions?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When did you last hear something truly unexpected?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who never listens to you?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who do you tend not to listen to?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When did you last sit in silence for 10 minutes...half an hour...an hour? </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></li>
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Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-4873039056941706752019-10-19T10:51:00.000-07:002020-06-10T07:26:11.782-07:00A Non-English Warning About the Johnson Brexit Deal <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Do you support the Withdrawal Deal Boris Johnson has negotiated with the EU and believe that the Union of the four countries within the UK is secure? I would like to invite you to consider the Deal carefully from a non-English perspective and, in particular, the potential impact of imposing such a Deal, without a second referendum, on the countries of Scotland, N. Ireland and Wales.</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is perceived as undemocratic in Scotland where the vote was 'remain' and may quite quickly lead to the departure of Scotland from the UK. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is perceived as undemocratic in N Ireland for the same reason and draws N Ireland closer to S Ireland.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It means N Ireland will be treated differently from the rest of the UK.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It creates political tensions in N Ireland.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It creates new issues that may lead to complication and disruption at Welsh ports, fuelling the independence movement in Wales and changing Wales' relationship with Ireland (both countries).</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is predicted to lead to a 6.4% reduction in GDP (which is more than 4% greater than Teresa May's Deal <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/johnsons-brexit-leaves-uk-economy-worse-off-than-mays/">here</a>). This will impact Scotland, N Ireland and Wales heavily with the loss of industries and jobs. </span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I grew up on the West coast of Wales during the period when the first Plaid Cymru MPs were elected, at the time of Tryweryn (the flooding of a Welsh valley, including a village, to provide water for Liverpool) and during the time of the Investiture of the Prince of Wales. It was also the era when Cymdeithas yr Iaith (the Welsh Language Society) were at the height of their direct action campaign. However, I have never seen so many people out on the streets demonstrating in favour of Welsh independence as I have recently. The protests have not been only in the Welsh heartlands but in areas that have traditionally shown little interest in independence; they have not been widely reported by the English media. This alerts me to the fact that, in England, people may underestimate the strength of feeling that is around. People in all three Celtic nations are unhappy that their voices are seemingly disregarded. The Deal currently under consideration is, I think, likely to lead to the eventual break up of the UK or at least to many years of debate about how the Celtic nations can (or why they should not) separate from England and join the EU. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is a growing perception in Scotland and Wales that their voices are not heard and their interests are not well served by Westminster.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For this reason I ask you to support all moves to take substantially more time to formulate and scrutinise any deal and to put a choice between that deal and remaining in the EU to all four nations in a referendum. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I often hear people say, 'Oh Scotland and, more particularly Wales, could never make a go of it on their own.' This article by Adam Price (a Plaid Cymru MP) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/03/uk-should-compensate-wales-for-reducing-it-to-poverty-plaid-cymru?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR28r1v-9q6YtpQ7lGExH-xncwiGf3QLyu5ahwxmKhugsLrJ1d0Xv6A-JMA">here</a> </span></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">offers some food for thought. I had no idea that Wales is the fifth largest exporter of electricity in the world!!</span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-12595885628867872302018-05-01T04:15:00.006-07:002018-05-07T06:05:03.737-07:00Unlimited Well-being?<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">7th - 12th May is Mental Health Awareness Week. Here in Nottingham the World Health Innovation Summit is hosting an all-day event in the Market Square, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ouzk5HIGWJOGE5Ym54SFNVc1c5M0VyR29odV9ySWw5QVow/view">SHINE</a>. The World Health Innovation Summit is an organisation that promotes local initiatives that galvanise communities into action supporting health-care. The underlying notion is that while the health-care services are over-stretched, there is much that can be done alongside such provision by local communities. You can read about their inspiring work and join their Facebook page <a href="http://www.worldhealthinnovationsummit.com/">here</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">SHINE will be an opportunity for individuals and organisations working in the Nottingham area to come together to share information and ideas about what is going on across the city to prevent and alleviate mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, depression and isolation. As well as that, it promises to be a great deal of fun with the chance to try out all kinds of activities! You might enjoy a Tai Chi taster or join in a meditation, you might watch a dance or talk to an artist or poet, you might find out about the benefits of reflexology or aroma therapy. There will be stalls, speakers and activities for children. There will be a 'mass meditation' starting at 12.05.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was recently talking to a very senior consultant physician. When he discovered that I'm training as a psychotherapist, he first of all confessed that all his training, background and instincts were 'firmly in the biological sciences'. Test out therapies and only use those that can be scientifically and rationally proven. He then went on (uninvited and therefore the more convincing!) to say that, however, he had come to appreciate the 'talking therapies' as he put it. He even went on to cite some studies he had made that showed that they were beneficial in reducing blood pressure in patients with persistent hypertension. He was now increasingly open to careful use of therapies that complement scientifically-based western medicine. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The great thing about the World Health Innovation Summit movement is that it seeks to do precisely that; to bring alongside standard medical, nursing and social care the resources of other approaches to wholeness and well-being. The World Health Organisation determines health on the basis of social and economic environment, the physical environment and a person's individual characteristics and behaviours. This latter category encompasses genetic, physiological, mental and spiritual factors. WHIS work by</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: OpenSans-Regular; letter-spacing: 0.14000000059604645px;">'</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.14000000059604645px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">bringing patients, clinicians, managers, voluntary sector, education and businesses together to exchange knowledge, inspire and innovate together.' Their website states,</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">'Health touches every sector: </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Education, Transport, Food and Agriculture, Housing, Waste, Energy, Industry, Urbanization, Water, Radiation, Nutrition (WHO). </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In order to find solutions we need inspiration and innovation. WHIS is about each and every one of us helping to support our health services. In order to do that we need a platform for people to contribute and meet to share their knowledge and the World Health Innovation Summit (Federation) provides that platform to do this in a consolidated structured process </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">and innovate solutions.'</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Read about their purpose <a href="http://www.worldhealthinnovationsummit.com/home/about-us/explanatory-note-whis/">here</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What impresses me about WHIS is its emphasis on local conversations and initiatives - so if you are in the Nottingham area, please come along and join in on 12th May. And, if not, you can find out what's going on in your area from their <a href="http://www.worldhealthinnovationsummit.com/">website</a>. Click on WHIS Summits in the header.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.14000000059604645px;">See you there - I'll be in the group doing Tai Chi!</span></div>
Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-77281361985592528092018-04-09T10:28:00.000-07:002018-05-07T06:04:16.329-07:00Speaking Truth to Power - Correct Me If I'm Wrong<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Correct me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be an overuse of the phrase 'speaking truth to power' just lately. I've caught campaigners, journalists, Guardian readers (of whom I am one), bishops, archbishops and insufficiently intersectional feminists using it in what might be considered defensible but sloppy ways.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's often used to mean communicating uncomfortable opinions or facts to </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">people who are perceived as having some authority or responsibility in a situation. Very often the speaker is, themselves, in what might be perceived as a position of moderate power or authority or is speaking on behalf of others. This is the case when religious leaders confront politicians, white feminists speak for all women or investigative journalists represent the views of others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The origin of the phrase casts it in a rather different light. In modern times, it was first recorded in 1942 by Bayard Rustin, a Quaker, who wrote that 'the primary social function of a religious society is to speak the truth to power'. He was making use of a Quaker way-of-being that reaches back at least to an eighteenth century Charge entitled 'Speaking Truth to Power'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The most often quoted use of the phrase is possibly in the title of a 1955 document. The American Friends Service Committee commissioned a study of international conflict. They were searching for alternatives to violence and militarism by which the American government might be advised to address 'anti American' behaviour of various kinds during the Cold War</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">'</span><i style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our truth is an ancient one: that love endures and overcomes; that hatred destroys; that what is obtained by love is retained, but what is obtained by hatred proves a burden. This truth, fundamental to the position which rejects reliance on the method of war, is ultimately a religious perception, a belief that stands outside of history. Because of this we could not end this study without discussing the relationship between the politics of time with which men</span> <span style="font-size: large;">are daily concerned and the politics of eternity which they too easily ignore.'</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://quaker.org/legacy/sttp.html" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence</a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> is a document well worth read</span></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">ing in full. It sets out </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">a distinct approach to the proper relationship between faith </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">and politics and, in doing so, defines the deep basis of the duty of speaking truth to power. Perception of truth, it claims, is a matter of belief in something that exists beyond the boundaries of history yet intimately influences our daily living.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">If the idea of speaking truth to power comes from a specifically pacifist attitude, then it also grows, more generally, out of Quaker approaches to what can be known of God. Quakers seldom make pronouncements about 'truth' without much careful inner searching, a great deal of thought and an arrival at a place where their lived experience of God-speaking-to-them is such that they can do no other than speak. It is only by a disciplined and difficult process that common truths can be spoken and acknowledged. It would be rare to find Quakers speaking 'truths' they did not first try to immerse themselves in <i>or </i>speaking dogmatically or</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> purely on behalf of others in a way that did not arise from their own experience. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">By all means, let public figures challenge people who hold power, let leaders campaign on behalf of disadvantaged groups. But don't devalue the notion of 'speaking truth to power' which is a rare, precious and profoundly effective thing. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #2c2d30;">Foucault likens it to the ancient Greek concept of 'bold speech' and describes it this way,</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2d30;"> '<i>...parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion,</i></span><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2d30;"> truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral</span></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2d30;"><i> duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.'</i> (The Meaning and the Evolution of the Word Parrhesia)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #2c2d30;">This is the approach of someone like the Bible's Queen Esther, Mahatma </span></span></span><span style="color: #2c2d30; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Gandhi or Nelson Mandela, living the truth they speak. There's an Indian word for it - Satyagraha - 'truth-force'. Chomsky had an interesting take on the notion when he turned it on its head and said that there was no need to speak truth to power as 'power knows the truth already and is busy concealing it'. According to Chomsky, it is the oppressed, not the oppressor that need to hear the truth because this will empower them to help themselves. As Martin Luther King famously observed, freedom is seldom, if ever, given voluntarily by the oppressor, it has to be demanded by the oppressed.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #2c2d30; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm not knocking leaders who have a go at pointing out the defects of political or social systems but I would prefer to call that campaigning. It would also be fair to note that all campaigns have their limits and this may be connected with the limits of embodiment and lived experience we all bring to our campaigning and speaking. Humility is called for!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #2c2d30; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">'Speaking the truth to power' in its proper sense is a rare occurrence. It is something that only the deeply committed can achieve and it is something that even they will likely only be able to do two or three times in their life. When this happens, the heavens will part and something more powerful than politics or human wisdom will gather a momentum that shapes history.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-61086252471333341952018-04-07T09:22:00.002-07:002018-05-07T06:03:06.356-07:0018,000 Miles Round the Globe<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I've just returned from an inspiring send-off for my good friend Robert Cleave. Robert's fulfilling a long-held ambition to cycle 18,000 miles around the world. He hopes to complete the journey over the next 18 months, doing it because he loves cycling and enjoys the adventure. He's raising money for Traidcraft and Cancer Research as he goes. You can follow his epic journey on <a href="http://www.robertsride18000.com/">www.robertsride18000.com</a>. The link to his Facebook page is also there. By tonight he will be in Morocco to start the African leg of his tour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was threatening rain as we all arrived at Bramcote Park to say 'Godspeed'. Among the 400+ who turned out were friends and family from all over Britain, former colleagues from Boots, Scouts and lots of folk from St Michael's Bramcote and other churches. After short speeches and a blessing by the Mayor of Broxtowe and the junior Mayor representing young people (what a great idea - well done, Broxtowe!), a ribbon was cut and Robert led a fleet of cyclists of all ages off on the symbolic first mile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">As he said himself, if you have something you've always wanted to do, don't get to the point where you can no longer do it and have to live with the regret - have a go. Even if you don't complete your challenge, you will know you tried! </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can't think of anything more inspiring to do with your retirement and Robert's example has set me thinking about how I can combine some of the things I've always wanted to do into a challenging adventure for the future. We wish Robert all the best, bon </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">voyage, safe travel, excellent health, good new friends and generous hospitality where ever he goes and a happy return with lots of stories to tell!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The other part of the challenge is of course Robert's family's. To give someone up for 18 months is quite a thing and they will be glad of your prayers, love and support.</span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-88328736932112808652018-04-02T02:11:00.000-07:002018-05-07T06:02:17.126-07:00Child Labour and Chocolate Eggs<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I was a child, Easter Monday was always the day for taking stock of the eggs sitting on top of the piano. There would usually be quite a few and you could work out how many days' supply of chocolate treats lay ahead with careful management!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The egg signified new life, nourishment, hope, the opening up of possibilities as the egg-shaped stone was rolled away from Jesus' tomb. It also meant lots of fun with your friends as you shared the generosity of aunts and uncles, next-door neighbours and grandparents.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not all children have the same innocent relationship of fun with the chocolate Easter egg. <a href="http://stopthetraffik.com.au/">Stop the Traffic</a> is an Australian coalition that campaigns to improve the wellbeing of farmers at the bottom of the food chain and thereby irradicate child labour and the trafficking of children. They focus mainly on the fashion, cotton, fishing, tea and chocolate industries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In West Africa (mainly the Ivory Coast and Ghana) a proportion of cocoa is harvested by child labour, mainly young boys who are trafficked for the purpose. 90% of the world's cocoa is grown by small-holding farmers who cannot make a living wage from selling their product to the large production companies. Stop the Traffic states that 70% of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa where there are millions of children involved in its production. Farmers are locked into a cycle that does not permit them to lift themselves and their families out of poverty and results in the use of forced child labour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In order to be certain that your Easter egg or other chocolate product has not been produced using child labour you need to look out for 'Fair Trade', 'Cocoa Life', 'Cocoa Plan', 'Rain Forest Alliance', 'Cocoa Farming Programme' or 'UTZ Certified Cocoa' labels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Stop the Traffic commissioned a report into the activities of six major chocolate companies. <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5600d036e4b056134c4419f3/t/5aba37232b6a28f01f7640a2/1522153273047/2018+STT+Report+Final+27032018.compressed.pdf">A Matter of Taste</a> is a unique and ground-breaking piece of work looking at the steps these companies are taking toward eliminating child labour and there is detailed information to be found there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Britain, many of us associate the production of chocolate with Quaker firms like Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry. Since the last third of the twentieth century these companies are no longer in Quaker hands and have been taken over by some of the multinational giants. But the charitable trusts set up in conjunction with these great Quaker companies remain and are now actively working toward sustainability of the environment and the irradication of poverty and slavery. More can be gleaned about the U.K. scene from Jon Martin's article on the Quaker website, <a href="http://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/quakers-and-chocolate">A Quick History of Chocolate and Quakerism</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">As you eat your Easter eggs, check for signs they haven't been produced using child labour and that they don't contain palm oil whose production contributes to deforestation. Jon Martin also makes the point that eating recreational food with ingredients transported across the globe is not the best way to use resources or celebrate life. So perhaps a look at how locally produced treats could be incorporated in your celebrations in future might provide for a more sustainable way of marking Easter next year?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Or here's an idea for Easter Story Eggs that might be fun (though not chocolatey!) <a href="http://www.creativebiblestudy.com/Christian-Easter-eggs.html">Resurrection Eggs</a>. You could make it with cardboard eggs and real leaves instead of plastic ones.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-67771024375591777952018-04-01T10:30:00.003-07:002018-05-07T06:03:20.821-07:00Beyond the Night Sky - Music for Stephen Hawking<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/h1el7B_s27I" width="480"></iframe><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is the music commissioned from composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad for Stephen Hawking's 75th Birthday. It's sung here by the choir of Gonville and Caius Cambridge, the college where he was a fellow for over 50 years. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was moving to see the familiar streets of central Cambridge crowded yesterday to say goodbye to one of the city's heroes. I lived in Cambridge for 14 years in the mid 1970's and the late 1990's and, throughout that time, Professor Stephen Hawking was a well known figure about the city. I remember the days when we used to hurry out of the evening service at Holy Trinity to get to the 8pm debate at Great Saint Mary's where he was an occasional attender, apparently interested in the intersection of science and religion though not a religious believer himself. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I read with fascination <i>A Brief History of Time</i> and managed not to get completely lost until the chapter on string theory. He was somebody who made physics accessible and interesting. He inspired many through his humanity, doing small things globally to encourage young people to achieve their potential and championing the NHS and affordable, accessible university education, sometimes at cost to himself as when he turned down a knighthood.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was impossible not to be moved by the power of his mind, by his courage and lack of self-regard and by his ability to communicate using a ready sense of humour - no mean feat through a synthesised voice. His timing was impeccable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It seemed to me very apt that one of the readings chosen for his funeral was <i>The Death of Socrates</i> from Plato's Apology 40. It was read by Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal and it reflects the courtesy of the atheist to the religious believer and vice versa so typified in Prof. Hawking's life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;">'Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things — either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;">Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;">For if a person were to select the night in which his</span><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life,</span></span><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;"> and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others.</span></i><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;">Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.</span></i><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;">But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?.</span></i><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;">What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?</span></i><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;">Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again...</span></i><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; padding: 0cm;">Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next.'</span></i><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This passage demonstrates respect for the view that there is no life beyond this life and explains why it is possible to be not just reconciled but inspired by this belief. It equally captures the joy of belief in opportunity and continued existence beyond this life so important in Christianity and other religions. And it presents us with freedom of choice.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A great life and a personality who 'broke boundaries with his mind' and boundaries not just in cosmology but of the limitations of divisions between human beings.</span></div>
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</aside>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-32343882480369808512018-04-01T07:39:00.001-07:002019-01-18T04:11:10.657-08:00Crisis?<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Today the national living wage rises to £7.83 (if you are over 25.) If you are aged 18-20 the minimum wage applies and that's set at £5.90. Apprentices and under 16's can be paid less. These figures can be checked out on the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates">government's information site</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm just looking at an advert for a nursery nurse. The pay is £7,280 per annum for full time hours. It's relatively common for nursery nurses' and carers' wages to fall below the national living wage. Many under 18's do not earn the minimum wage. Some workers are not paid when they are sick as they are contracted on an hourly rate. Carers may well be required to own and run a car in order to do their job.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is a crisis brewing. The U.K. does not have enough workers who will work for the wages offered to care for our children, elderly, and emotionally and physically vulnerable. We are seeing a rapid fall (proportional to the growth of the elderly population) in the number of people who are willing to care under the conditions created by successive government policies. These sectors are groaning under the weight of top down supervision, constant change and heavy handed policy-making.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Those who teach and care for our most precious loved ones - our youngest children and our elderly parents - provide the basic 'oil in the engine' that allows society to function. This 'oil' is the ability of ordinary people to go about their business every day knowing that their family will be cared for and taught at affordable cost by well-motivated, competent, compassionate people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a country we are moving to a situation where there will be a crisis of recruitment. What seems to be missing is any consistent, research-based attempt to listen to the voices of the practitioners as well as the policy makers. What research has been done to find out what carers see as priorities for their charges and for themselves as workers? What motivates someone to go into these roles and dedicate themselves to the initial and continual training required? OFSTED and the CQC ought to be commissioning research and taking a good hard look at the results to ensure that measurement systems and inspections are based on a sound understanding of the basic needs of <i>both</i> clients and workers. Only with the buy-in and wisdom of the carers themselves can we ensure our children, disabled and elderly are supported in the best possible quality of life. The problem with setting standards that are not shaped by those delivering the care and the teaching is that the workforce gradually becomes disillusioned, disempowered and de-motivated and it becomes increasingly difficult to attract new people into the sector and retain them after training.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But I believe there's a deeper problem. And that lies in the prevailing attitude toward any 'industry' that does not generate profit. As a society we seem to have lost the notion of vocation - the idea that we are all called to set aside sufficient resources for the care of our children, our ill, our disabled and our elderly. We ought to be doing this as a proportion of the GNP and we ought to be doing it individually in families and locally through the giving of time and voluntary support. 'Called' is perhaps a word with religious overtones to which some might object. However I think it's the right word in this context and it arises from our common humanity. The human condition is such that where there is need, we notice and respond; where this need is among our own, we <i>cannot</i> be unknowing. It is the the mark of the humanity of any functional social grouping that, out of its wealth, it sets aside enough for its most vulnerable members.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Historically 'care' has been the job of the family and often the women in the family. It is no great surprise that one of our lowest paid sectors arises from a trajectory of 'women's work'. The role of women in caring has transferred from the family to the churches to the social services and health care agencies without any rigorous evaluation of the skill or value intrinsic of its worth. As a society we simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs about care. On the one hand it's something anyone can do - don't parents do it all the time for their children? No special training necessary! On the other hand it's something about which lots of people say 'I couldn't do that for all the tea in China.' Too much patience needed, too many menial tasks involved! Put the two attitudes together and you have a profession that is not thought of as requiring much skill or training and where most people do not wish to think about its reality in too much detail. So the myth that there is a plentiful supply of 'angels' who will do this sort of work is perpetuated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps as the living wage increases you might spend a moment or two thinking about how you do or could live on or below the living wage. And maybe think about jobs that are often slightly better paid - waiters, bar staff, checkout staff, cleaners, delivery personnel for example - and wonder why it is we value some of those who take on the responsibility of caring for our family members so little. </span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-43064292636984798072018-02-26T07:07:00.001-08:002018-07-08T03:32:41.581-07:00Surviving Endometriosis - just!<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The strange thing about endometriosis is that no-one talks about it </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometriosis" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Endometriosis: quick definition)</span></a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. I suffered from extremely severe 'period pains' between the ages of 13 and 53. For 2-3 days a month I had excruciating abdominal pain. Sometimes it was so bad that I fainted, my extremities would be freezing cold, I would shake and vomit up to 20 times a day. Innumerable doctors shook their heads and talked about dysmenorrhoea; some were very sympathetic others were not. One actually said, 'Well you're not going to die of it.' Nothing they prescribed touched the pain very much. Although I had my suspicions about what was wrong, endometriosis was not diagnosed until I was 39 when, even though he had the results of a laproscopy in front of him, my GP expressed scepticism about whether I was really suffering from it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">At school, the attitude was, 'Pull yourself together, everybody has periods.' That was if I got as far as telling friends or teachers the real reason for my repeated bouts of 'illness'. When I was 16, due to the abdominal pain, I had my appendix out only to be told that there was nothing wrong with it. I felt labeled as 'someone who can't cope' although, in fact, I managed to do most of the things my friends did - play in an orchestra, swim and play tennis regularly and pass enough exams to get a degree and a nursing qualification. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In my 40's, I discovered my father's sister had had similar problems but this had never been mentioned or discussed at home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>How did I cope?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was lucky to have parents who never made me feel guilty or inadequate because I was ill. They lived with it and saw how absolutely incapacitated I was for several days a month. Having a slightly irregular cycle meant it wasn't even possible to plan ahead with much accuracy but they put up with all this and never complained or pushed me to do things I couldn't manage. They unfailingly gave sympathetic support. This usually meant not fussing and leaving me in a quiet place, near a toilet, with plenty of vomit bowls and a hot water bottle. My mother always held out the hope the doctors would come up with a wonderful cure and this occasionally led to arguments as I got older because I increasingly came to see such hopes as futile. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">My husband was equally brilliant. During all the years I suffered, he put up with watching the person he loved in complete agony. He regularly had to cancel engagements (which he hates doing) because I was too ill to make a phone call. He negotiated the mixture of disappointment and embarrassment that met these cancellations - sometimes it was tinged with an unspoken hint, 'you're letting us down'. He drove me to occasional emergency appointments with the GP when the pain became so unbearable we wondered if something else was causing it such as an ecpotic pregnancy. He accompanied me on the inevitable infertility investigations and ate out alone in restaurants when we were on holiday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I developed a strategy for coping. In my mid twenties I gave up searching for any kind of cure or even a firm diagnosis. I simply refused to spend any more energy thinking about being ill or visiting doctors and dealing with their scepticism. I trained myself to behave as though every period was the last time this was going to happen. As soon I was able to stand up again, I launched back into leading a normal life. I never said, 'no,' to anything because I thought I might be ill. I simply lived with the consequences of having to cancel or have a 'plan b'. I learnt that when the chips are down, there aren't many situations in which you are indispensable. Lectures can be rescheduled, friends and colleagues will help out, things can wait a day or two. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I had brilliant managers during my nursing career. Perhaps because of their medical background, they 'got it' and it was the one time in my life when I could ring in sick, give the real reason and not be met with embarrassment or incomprehension. I am so grateful for the way they juggled rotas. However, when I was well, I was always the person who could not say 'no' if asked to do an extra shift. Later, as a parish priest and a lecturer, life was a little easier in that my diary was slightly more within my own control and most things could be rescheduled or a colleague asked to help.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Infertility can be one of the effects of endometriosis.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I would have loved to have children but my husband was more ambivalent and, as getting pregnant became ever more unlikely, I simply ceased to think about it very much. I appreciate that, given my situation, we are fortunate to be people who did not feel desperate to have children. However, as I get older, I do regret that we have no immediate 'next generation' to share life with.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Are there any positives about living with endometriosis?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Almost none! However, there have been one or two useful spin-offs. I did develop a capacity for hard work. I usually seemed to get as much done as other people while missing out on 2-3 days a month. I felt pressure to be as good as I possibly could be at my job so that people would put up with my regular absences. This, of course, had both negative and positive consequences. The positive side of it was that, on the whole, I learned to plan well and get through a large workload quickly and efficiently and to maintain empathetic relationships with colleagues on whom I was more than normally dependant. I also developed a capacity to observe and listen out for pain in others. As both a nurse and a priest, this is important. Nurses have a saying, 'Pain is what the patient says it is', Samaritans talk about 'steering into distress.' Having endometriosis has helped me to understand that all expressions of pain, physical or emotional, are deserving of being taken seriously - people need support to explore their own pain and to decide for themselves what course of action they want to take. Many of the responses of our medical community and our wider society to pain are unhelpful or inadequate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>What has been most difficult about living with endometriosis?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have struggled with feeling guilty about the strain it has put on my family and colleagues. The pain has been so bad at times that, while it lasts, I have felt I would do almost anything to end it - the only thing that has kept me going is knowing that it will end sooner or later. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Undoubtedly one of the biggest problems has been the wall of silence surrounding, generally, anything to do with periods and, specifically, a disease that is gynaecological in nature. My family did not talk about it. We often colluded with the silence by not giving the real reason I was incapacitated. I did not even know endometriosis existed until I was well into my 20's. I grew up with a sense that maybe there was something wrong with my attitude to periods - perhaps I <i>was</i> making a lot of fuss about something others were able to cope with. I did not know that someone else in my family had struggled with the disease and might have had some wisdom to offer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Even doctors collude in the silence. With two notable exceptions, mine seldom seemed to listen. As soon as I said 'trouble with periods', they would say, 'Oh it's dymenorrhoea' and write a prescription for naproxen or the pill. Some looked as though they believed you, others did not. I used to wonder how there could ever be any progress in finding treatments for a condition if medical staff routinely took so little interest in listening to a patient describe their actual symptoms. Consequently, it took me 26 years to arrive at a diagnosis and that meant I was unaware of the dangers of infertility that are associated with the disease until I was too old to do very much about it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>For the future:</b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is it that makes 'women's problems' so unacceptable that we cannot talk freely about the reality of what is happening to our bodies? If there is one thing I would change (other than not having the disease!) it is to make it absolutely acceptable for a woman to be able to talk openly about this illness to her family, her boss, her colleagues and her doctors. Why should there be any more shame or embarrassment about saying 'I will have to cancel because my period is making me very unwell' than 'I will have to cancel because I have flu or food poisoning or a flare up of my M.S.'?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Until it is possible to talk about endometriosis openly, we will neither make all the progress we can in finding a cure for this puzzling condition nor enable women who live with it to live as openly, fully and honestly as anyone else with a debilitating, chronic illness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Please support <a href="https://www.awarenessdays.com/awareness-days-calendar/endometriosis-awareness-week-2018/">Endometriosis Awareness Week 2018</a> (3rd - 9th March). If you know anyone with the disease, listen to them, let them feel it's OK to talk about it if they want to. Educate yourself so that you understand what it is and its impact on the lives of those who suffer with it and their families. Support research if you can. Tell your story if you have any experience of it and feel you can. Especially help young people who suffer not to feel stigmatised or alone.</span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-85445672986397525282018-02-13T04:51:00.001-08:002018-05-07T05:57:53.579-07:00UN Women: Care in Context<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fcqt0QzgUFU" width="480"></iframe>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-535418838787372965.post-61312466300940215602018-02-13T04:50:00.000-08:002018-02-13T04:50:05.583-08:00Keeping Wide Horizons<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">'We live in a world of information overload; and this very overload is beginning to become the handmaid of injustice because it has become the motive force of selectivity and truthlessness rather than the tool of discernment. This is a time when all of us need to dig deep in order to continue to look beyond narrowing self–interests. This is a time to transcend narrowing self–understandings, to undertake creative thinking such as none of us has ever needed before.' </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Archbishop of Dublin, Cambridge, Leadership 2017</span>Janet Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00663828975134608297noreply@blogger.com0